Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories

Making the world a better place, one Evil Mad Scientist at a time.

Quick project: LED-lit sea urchins

Last week we came across these tiny sea urchinshells at a beach shop, thin and light as eggshells. What to do with them? Light them up with LEDs, of course!

We’ve seen sea urchin lamps before, but they’ve always been made with large (i.e., sturdy) and colorful ones. In contrast, these tiny ones might be better to hang around christmas lights like little paper lanterns.

19 thoughts on “Quick project: LED-lit sea urchins”

Can you post a picture with the throwie sitting next to the urchin? I honestly couldn’t get a sense of scale with the pictures other than the one with the hand in it, and even then, I know some hands are much bigger than others. :)

Very beautiful, though! I like the idea of either a trio of these in different colors, fading randomly back and forth, or, as you mentioned, over christmas lights as a type of hanging light string.

Sea urchin shells aren’t visible when the sea urchin is alive. They’re a ball of animate spikes, sometimes colorful, sometimes not. I’m of the opinion that a ball of animate spikes is pretty cool, but sea urchins mostly don’t look like their shells.

I see geek wedding project RIGHT HERE. sweet. do you think a nano-throwie would work better to fit inside the urchins? like maybe a 3mm led, and a tiny battery? or would that compromise the glowing way too much?

these are beautiful. alive, sea urchins bristle with black spines which are razor-sharp and brittle. they’re entitled to their defense-mechanism, but a profusion of these spiny things will put a coral reef’s ecosystem in peril.